When an entity (the “host”) constructs a World Wide Web (the “web”) site or application (hereafter “site”), it typically seeks to structure the web site in a manner that allows the web site visitor (the “visitor”) to perform certain tasks in connection with the web site. These tasks generally comprise visitor interactions with a particular sequence of web pages via a user-interface such as in a web browser application. Because the web offers a freedom of choice to the visitor to leave the web site at any time and travel instantaneously to a competing web site, it behooves the host to design the site to afford the goals of the visitor as efficiently as possible.
The majority of visitors to a web site have a particular goal in mind. The business effectiveness of the web site can be measured by how efficiently it allows the visitors to accomplish their goals. Web sites that don't communicate to visitors what can be done at the site and how will not succeed in retaining visitors. Moreover, the goals of the site as set forth by the designers often do not match the goals of the site visitors. Understanding what the visitors are doing and how they are doing it is necessary for maximizing the business effectiveness of a web site.
If the visitor completes their task(s) in a lengthy or roundabout manner, or cannot complete the expected or desired task(s), or attempts to perform different tasks than the site designer expected, then the host would benefit from a tool to evaluate the anomalies or trends in the visitor's behavior. Through the host obtaining such information, the host could then modify the web site in order to increase the likelihood that the visitor completes the tasks for which the web site was intended and that the web site facilitates the visitor's desired task(s). The host could also use the information for a wide range of other purposes, such as reducing the cost of maintaining the web site, directing marketing campaigns, etc.
Although there currently exists a manner to customize a web site by tracking visitor behavior, described in detail in Applicant's United States patent application entitled “System and Method for Providing Customized Web Pages”, herein incorporated by reference, there is a tremendous benefit in having the ability to track and analyze the performance of certain defined tasks. These tasks can be known to the site host because the site was designed to facilitate such tasks, or be uncovered by analyzing visitor interaction with the web site. Current web site log analysis tools count the most common paths visitors took through the site, but these paths are typically the home page, the home page plus the second most visited page, the home page plus the third most visited page, etc. The paths don't have any inherent relevance to the visitor tasks the web site was designed to support, and the tools don't provide any insight into how the visitors performed variations on, entry and exit to, etc. a particular common path.
Consequently, a system and method are needed that allows an expected visitor task to be defined in the context of the site, and that analyzes observed visitor behavior to identify which visitors performed what parts of the task, when and how. Further, a system is needed that presents the relevant task performance information in a meaningful and comprehensible manner, providing recommendations that can be acted upon by the host to improve the web site. Armed with this knowledge and recommendations to change the web site from the system, the host can make decisions about how to change the web site to better facilitate visitor tasks and to better facilitate the tasks for which the site was designed.